my speaking of myself, though that is an old man's habit, and is conceded as a privilege of age.
X. Do you not know how very often Homer introduces Nestor as talking largely of his own merits? Nor was there any fear that, while he told the truth about himself, he would incur the reproach of oddity or garrulity; for, as Homer says, "words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue." For this suavity of utterance he had no need of bodily strength; yet for this alone the leader of the Greeks,[1] while not craving ten like Ajax, says that with ten like Nestor he should be sure of the speedy fall of Troy.—But to return to my own case, I am now in my eighty-fourth year. I should be glad if I could make precisely the same boast with Cyrus; yet, in default of it, I can say this at least, that, while I am not so strong as I was when a soldier in the Punic war, or a Quaestor in the same war, or Consul in Spain, or when, four years afterward, I fought as military Tribune[2] at Thermopylae, in the consulate of Manius Acilius Glabrio, still, as you see, old age has not wholly unstrung my nerves
- ↑ Agamemnon, who craves ten συμφράδμονες, equally wise in counsel, with Nestor.
- ↑ According to Livy, Cato was legatus, or second in command, at this time, and it is hardly possible that an ex-consul should have served as a military tribune. We have here, perhaps, an oversight of Cicero, or, possibly, an over-acting of the old man's treacherous memory in Cato, whose extreme old age Cicero evidently personates with marvellous dramatic skill throughout this dialogue.
